


Love

by sbahjification



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Cute, F/F, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-06 01:42:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4203168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbahjification/pseuds/sbahjification
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love takes time, and love takes work.</p><p>A short story of the time and work put into forming the love that is Garnet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just an unimportant encounter

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in like an hour i think so sorry if its bad. also there's like 1 swear in it just a warning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first encounter between Ruby and Sapphire.

"And that's why we, the Crystal Gems, will no longer stand for this meaningless genocide of such an innocent planet! With all our combined forces, we can ensure the safety of every human from the tyrants of the homeworld! We are the Crystal Gems!" From her perch on a broken injector and cardboard box fashioned into a stand that rose her above the rest, Pink Diamond's authoritative voice ran out, rousing the spirits of all the gems who had circled around her, and more that coincidentally wandered into the rally, who had grown the crowd to an impressive size. At the outer circle of it stood a small and lonely Sapphire, her lone eye hidden but flashing futures before her as quickly as she could manifest them. Normally, they were unbiased, crafted out of worry if anything. But this time, the flashes she collected were made of neither neutrality nor worry, but of hope.

One by one, she considered ever more futures where she would be more than a prophetic tool, where the gorgeous diamond before her stood atop a hill, claiming it and the Earth for her own. The chant worked on her, and in her optimism she joined in. "We are the Crystal Gems!" her voice contributed, the excited shrillness of it amplifying the clamor. She rode on a high of positivity for a couple minutes before a clattering drew her attention, just barely rising over the crowd even from where Sapphire stood. No one else around her seemed worried, though, so she followed the occasional crashes to their source and following the future she saw. As she drew nearer, her mind crafted ever more detailed pictures of the happenings until every single outcome began with a small Ruby banging hands against the walls in excitement, and they all ended with others joining in, riots forming, and the Crystal Gems being overtaken before they even began, and so she attempted to thwart those futures before they happened, taking a hold of the ruby's hand firmly. 

"We don't need to riot. Not yet," she declared, making eye "contact" to the best of her ability and trying to look firm, even though the owner of the large hand could, and most likely would, overpower her, especially since it was a ruby she was dealing with. Even the best of them were known for a hot-headed temperament, so instead she worked her way around directly commanding her to calm down. "If we use up all our energy now, we won't have any for when it really matters." Beneath her gloved hand she could feel the other's tense up, and then calm down, squirming only to be free of her grip but not making much noise afterward.

Following a moment of tension between the two, the Ruby shouted out, "Well, go away then! You got me to shut up!! So just-- Stop staring at me!"

Oh crap. She was staring, wasn't she? Taking a step back just in case Ruby lost her temper again, Sapphire nodded and shuffled her way back among the bigger gems with a relatively quiet "Nice to meet you," and that concluded their discussion.

But as Sapphire headed off to her quarters, her vision spun with futures of her and the ruby meeting again someday.


	2. Proposal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose Quartz states exactly what she'll need out of Sapphire.

Pink Diamond - no, Rose Quartz - took her hand gently and led her up the slope. It was rumored to be a beautiful place, standing at the top of an expansive field that Rose Quartz could commandeer at her will. When they reached the top, a rustling told Sapphire that the queen was sitting, and she did the same.

"You can only see things when you have a future for them, right?" Rose Quartz questioned, her voice low and gentle, giving Sapphire the indication that she was safe here, where they could talk alone.

"Right," came the response.

"Imagine a future in this field... Where everything looks as it does now, but it's overrun with gems and humans, living peacefully together... in happiness."

She did. The combination of her voice and how she described the land that had already popped up in Sapphire's vision brought to her a clear sight of the beauty that she was supposed to be imagining, and the two sat in silence while she considered it. Rose gave her at least fifteen seconds before taking again.

"It's great, isn't it? We'll have humans to hang out with, and we won't be locked in constant wars or rigid societal classes. That's what I want for the Crystal Gems. That's what I want for all of us. But I won't be able to do it without you. You're the only Sapphire in the whole army."

"Mrs. Di- err... Quartz... If you're asking me to stay with you, I've already made up my mind. I want a future like that too."

"I was going to ask something else of you, actually. I saw you with that Ruby. And to be honest, she's aggressive, maybe to a fault. She needs someone to calm her down as effectively as you did."

"I can pacify her, if that-"

"And you need eyes." She'd already cut off Sapphire's protest, and she now practically cut off her horrified reaction, intending to make her proposal clear. "Sapphire, I want you and Ruby to fuse for the war."

Instincts led Sapphire to cringe. Fusion was a cop-out, it was something weak gems did when they knew they weren't strong enough, that was what she'd been told ever since her conception. Over the span of the thousand years of her life, the Homeworld had drilled that into her. Fusion was a last resort, and nothing else.

But she was so, so weak. And as much as it pained her to admit, a blind, four foot tall sapphire with only brass knuckles as a weapon would die. Quickly. She knew that, and Rose Quartz knew that, and Rose Quartz had gone to all the trouble of bringing her to this beautiful place on Earth, to make the news easier on her, so that even as she accepted her own mortality, and the mess she could no longer safely back out of, and exactly what was being asked of her, she was here, and she had the future in her head. It would only be possible if she, the only sapphire volunteer, became stronger, by going against her home and her instincts. It wasn't a request. It was a requirement.

So she came to her senses and whispered, "Sure," and she could feel the smile radiating from Rose Quartz's face as her hand was taken hold of and pulled upward to guide the rest of her body, and as she was hugged into a gemstone, and a brief future flashed before her closed eyes where she summoned her brass knuckles and broke the gem before Rose could even blink twice, and as her heart skipped a beat she knew Rose saw that future too, in the back of her mind, but the hug remained gentle and trusting. Just as Sapphire was pouring her life into this cause, so was Rose pouring her into her total trust of Sapphire to betray neither her nor her army, and Sapphire didn't realize that they'd been hugging for probably full minutes until Rose gently pushed her away.

"Thank you."


	3. Time and work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gems try fusion.

It felt like the blink of an eye between when Sapphire was being gently cradled by Rose and when she was being roughly tossed around by Ruby, trying to focus her anger into a functioning fusion dance to sync up with her polar opposite and failing, repeatedly, each time to be held back by Sapphire and warned in a decreasingly patient voice that it's okay and that they didn't immediately have to fuse, and this was only practice.

After a fifth reminder, they took a break, which entailed sitting on opposite sides of Rose and staring out at the field, imagining what could be. The silence was broken by the sound of hurried footsteps sweeping Sapphire up and leading her on a dance. Ruby had found her flow, it seemed, and Sapphire quickly adjusted, now focusing on what this was for, what their end goal was, and how they had to get there, and the dance became methodical, unconscious, and loose, and before she knew it they were having fun, and just as smiles cracked across both their faces they melted away.

When she opened her eyes, she was no longer Sapphire - she was Garnet, and Garnet looked at her arms and her legs, and she was so much higher up than before, and she could _see_. Ruby temporarily took control to shout out "So you could only see the future?! Is that why you were staring at me?" And Sapphire used the same body to nod, and to stare out at the field. She could piece together what it looked like from her future vision, but that paled in comparison to seeing it. She'd fused once or twice, for business purposes, but never had she gotten used to seeing the present, and she had no need to - until now.

And as she explored her eyes, she stumbled onto those of Rose Quartz, whose normally gentle smile was now in a bright grin as she watched the gems stumble through their new body, both of them clearly being inexperienced with fusing. As they made remarks back and forth to each other, using the same mouth and the same brain, they explored new capabilities, for a while. Sharing one mind, it turned out, was difficult, and they ended up piloting the limbs and the body one at a time, until an argument broke out and they fell onto their asses.

"That was cool! Can we do it again?" Ruby piped, already back on her feet with the fighting spirit that seemed to rule her existence. It took Sapphire more time to collect herself, but she was happy to join in on Ruby's crude attempt at sparking the fusion dance again, and after a few moments they soon belonged in the combined purple skin that was Garnet.

"Yeah! I'm huge again! Let's go punch some stuff!" In her eagerness to summon a weapon, Ruby fell out of sync and so, though Garnet's left gem glowed, nothing happened.

"We can't just punch random things. We can summon a weapon, though, to see what ours is."

"Can we at least punch one thing?"

"... Just one."

The resulting excitement spread through both their minds and together Ruby's boxing gloves and Sapphire's brass knuckles tried to form at the same time and combined into a pair of gauntlets that would easily be beyond the lifting capabilities of the individuals, but were nothing for Garnet. Again they looked over at Rose Quartz, who hadn't let her smile falter once, and they ran downhill and punched the biggest rock they could find into smithereens. 

"I'm so proud of you two," Rose said to the now-defused gems at the top of the hill again. "You're going to have to synchronize better if you want to work well in battle, but this is a better start than I expected. The both of you are going to help more than you even know."


	4. Happy ending (yay)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly as the title says.

They had now taken up permanent residence on Earth. Ruby and Sapphire were given a small cabin to share, since they combined took up less space than even some other gems, and they had become dependent on each other. Ruby was now one of few people that knew of Sapphire's disability, and Sapphire was one of few people that could consistently placate Ruby whenever she lost her temper. They spent the days working together, discussing strategies with Rose Quartz, and recruiting help from humans and fellow gems, and their nights were spent practicing fusion and talking.

The more they learned about each other, the more interested they became, most especially from Ruby to Sapphire - after all, a medium-ranking gem like her with no extraordinary abilities besides strength didn't have nearly the same experience as an oracle and a princess, who was nevertheless still interested in Ruby as well, and they talked and talked and talked about all the memories they'd formed over their thousand or so years of life.

And somewhere along the way, they didn't shut up.

Fusion became second nature to them, and when they did they lost themselves and became Garnet - powerful, strong, dual-sighted Garnet. Garnet who was originally formed out of necessity, but at some point had become formed out of love.

And the star-crossed lovers fought with each other as a perfectly synchronized Garnet, and with every second they became closer to the future that constantly probed their shared vision - a future of victory, all thanks to them.

When the battlefield had been cleared of all the gems that could be salvaged, they took up camp, and Garnet moved her small house to live among the fields, peacefully, with humans and gems coexisting, and with Ruby and Sapphire constantly inserting the love they felt for each other into the love Garnet felt for herself, and in all the futures they'd ever imagined, none quite compared to the happy ending they had just with each other.


End file.
